The adventure starts here

Month: May 2017

The digital story ‘Laughter Yoga in Peace Lab.’ Is a documentary examining the life of a Lawyer who founded the ‘Peace Lab’ to coach meditation and yoga to train people to ease stress and tensions in life. To talk about the experience, it was a shocking and funny moment while watching the video. Because it was weird to see people laughing loud, like few on the floor and few standing. Later I realised how stressful and painful their life is.

The person behind the video should have done lots of research regarding content, editing, camera and so on. The shots were very amateur, but I felt a raw feel to the video with made me feel realistic. The most interesting part is video’s target audience is so specific, i.e., people who are interested in stress relief or may be yoga. I couldn’t get much information about the social media campaign to reach the audience. Another thing I wish to talk about is ‘Logo’, to me the meaning of the logo is a single eyed yogi.

THIS IS NOT THE CASE

This is the only video I like technically, they had a perfect camera and editing plans. The black and white, video’s noise filters and Charlie Chaplin style of approach were my favourite picks in the project. The video was about an overseas student from Asia trying to become a part of new Australian society. However, she alway meets some embarrassing things thanks to the culture difference. The plot was funny and made all of us engaged and laugh in class.

They have made a good step in their social media campaign, they have almost used all the available social media platforms to share their work and reach the maximum audience. Editing was perfect in the video, timely syncing of slow and fast motions made the video more attractive, the piece of music running throughout the video reminded me of old Charlie Chaplin movies.

Music is the greatest language in the world, people can understand the feeling or mood of the music while listening even though they don’t know the meaning. (Patel 2008) “Is music a universal language or not?”, This is the question to be proved through our reaction video. We should be able to communicate our idea to everyone in the audience equally with our Musicorum project, which is one of our goals to create a real fusion of multicultural idioms, without sacrificing anything. To achieve this idea, we as part of the Musicorum experiment have put together a group of 10 to 15 volunteers who were made to listen to a music track and based on their listening experience, we got them talking to explore if some/most of their answers are similar or different.

During the pre-production stage, my duty was to build a website, design minimal posters and logo. And for production, my duty was to take care of cinematography and sound. We used Sony X200 Videocam, and Zoom HF Lapel mic for the shoot and no additional lights were used. Shooting was smooth and perfectly arranged. But, during the shoot, there was a lot of disturbances from the construction site of Metro Tunnel. Another Group ‘Melbourne Busking’, had this same issue with the ambience sound as they were shooting on the streets. The mic recorded all the unwanted ambience sounds and made our sound mixing work harder. And another thing we should have changed during the shoot was the background of the frame because there was a poster behind the speaker which will mislead the viewer. And one more mistake we did was about the second angle for the shoot. If we had one more angle for the shoot, I think our edit would have been better. My part in social media campaign was to bring out something catching to attract more followers for the social media pages. So, I came up with the idea of an Instagram template board with ‘Muiscorum’ title. I passed the idea to my team member Emre, he went down the Melbourne streets and asked people to pose for the photo, which in turns made people search for the social media pages.

Post-production was the most challenging part for me because the selection of the exact expressions and answers from the vast collection of footages was not an easy task. I had interviews with fifteen people, and a huge number of questions and answers were to be watched and picked. We planned to make a video with fast and precise cuts. For a better understanding of the viewers, questions were displayed in the bottom of the video, and other popups like country flags and names were also added. The video was a bit over exposed, and skin tone of the participants was messed up. At the point when there are individuals in the shot, life is a great deal more unpredictable; because skin tone is a “memory colour.” So grading and colour correction were done to make it appealing. A cool blue tungsten tone was added to the video. Larry Jordan is a Video Editor who faced a similar issue with setting back the skin tone. He describes it on his blog and how to get rid of it and other problems which can be arisen while colour correction and grading over exposed videos. His suggestions are to add enough mid-tones and shadows to the video. Then to compare colour scheme and editing style of most famous reaction video and notice how colours improve viewers attraction. He also suggests using cool colour tint like, blue, green or violet, and as it allows for easy catching by the eyes. Details from his blog helped me to make the video better without the clutters, and with additional graphical text representation, it became much better in appearance.

The expression “Cross-Media” is frequently clarified as something that incorporates the dispersion of substance (e.g. music, pictures, video, and so on.) among various media. One every now and again utilised mix is TV, daily papers/magazines cell phones and the Internet. (Cambridge.org 2017)

Crossmedia is normally observed as the utilisation of customary media along each other in a creative way. In any case, the term can be utilised as a part of an assortment of ways; cross-average ideas are not just shaped utilising a business reason (counting showcasing efforts and broadcasting courses of action) additionally rely on upon the individual existences of customers. In the present media scene, purchasers control the utilisation of media; they choose when and where they wish to get to particular media and substance. The cross-media division itself characterises the term as takes after:

“The crosswise over media-part gives sight and sound items and administrations by utilising radio, TV, the Internet, cell phones, print and occasions all the while along each other.”

This suggests the collaboration amongst organisations and authorities is a piece of the idea of cross-media also.

Technology vs. Communicative Goal:

In a few parts, cross-media is related to advancement and strategy. Distributors, for instance, utilise the word cross media for database distributing; articles, intended for magazines, appropriated among other media like CD or e-paper. This procedure of disseminating a similar substance through various channels is likewise called multi-directing.

The present propensity among creation organisations and broadcasting companies, be that as it may, is to some degree diverse. More substance is created to start with, and changed a while later, to suit diverse media. Cases of this are podcasts and vodcasts. This substance can be downloaded to, for instance, an iPod, and saw or tuned in at any coveted time. Clients can rate the substance, and extra related things can be prescribed to them by different clients.

This last case demonstrates that a cross-media idea does not need to be connected to a specialised idea. It demonstrates that cross-media can be utilised as an instrument to accomplish an informative objective (For this situation giving a supposition about a podcast). As it were, the term cross-media is utilised to infer the open objective of an idea.

Narrating

Another meaning of cross-media is given by Crossmedia-master Monique de Haas:

“Crossmedia is a specialised device including a story that urges you to change starting with one medium then onto the next, and back.”

The outcome has enhanced the idea in two courses: from one perspective, the profundity of the story expands (which prompts more advantages for the client), while despite what might be expected, the shot of making a traverse to another medium is expanded because of the intriguing story.

Another essential advantage of a decent story is the developing plausibility of useful informal promoting (buzz); along these lines, the speculation of a decent showcasing story can bring about a large measure of benefits, inside a brief time-traverse.

Advertising

Cross average advertising includes the utilisation of various media, in light of their particular qualities. The principle reason for this blend is to build the area of a battle. As such: the media mix needs to serve the crusade idea, so as to boost effect on the objective gathering.

The utilisation of various media does not actually prompt a cross-average idea. In any case, if the distinctive media are utilised as a part of such a path, to the point that their qualities are utilised without limitations, and the likelihood of support for the objective gathering is available, one could call it a cross-average idea.

The cross-average appropriation of substance is a productive approach to building mark mindfulness. Mark mindfulness is utilised to strengthen the client encounter, for example by putting the item into various settings. A decent case of this is a case of LEGO joined to an arrangement of batteries. A site page on the bundle urges customers to visit the site and purchase more LEGO.

A few years ago, Social Media was an evolving technology praised more for its technical virtues than its capability to request to the people. For a log time, there was a significant change in the way masses participate in social media and make use of it to humanise the interactions between organisations and the community. When the use of social networking websites began to increase rapidly, businesses took notice. Those shrewd companies realised about reaching out to people in social media gave them the opportunity to cast a broad net in the target route.

For instance, companies could place ads targeted towards women in popular fashion blogs and gaining thousands of their attention per day. The change happened when businesses or corporations recognised the key to success lay in interaction, for example, giving target people the ability to have a two-way conversation. Moreover, this is not long before non-profit organisations followed suit.

To get the most benefit from adding social media to our marketing plan, it should be a part of the complete business strategy. All the applied tactics must directly support the organisation’s objectives and goals. As there are so many social media platforms available, which platform and tactics are most applicable? The answer depends on:

The time we have to devote to social media each week?

What will be the main objectives and goals?

How do this social media help to meet the goals?

Which are platform audience engaged more?

Here are the most popular websites and tools:

FACEBOOK helps in communicating softer news and helps in building community.

TWITTER contributes to getting connected to followers by sending updates which are timely and exciting.

FLICKR helps in managing photos and graphic images while sharing with the target. (Photos of events and activities for Non-profits)

LINKEDIN contributes to getting introduced to and collaborate with professionals.

YOUTUBE helps in uploading and sharing video clips to the public.

BLOGS contributes to exchange ideas in greater depth and lets us share tips and expertise related to the goal.

PODCASTS helps in educating the audience with recorded news and information framed by current events data about the organisation.

Other than creating social media campaign, non-profits should participate in other groups in the social media like commenting on blogs, join on FB fan pages.

The non-profits should try to incorporate a mix of messaging objectives targeted towards users in social media. Proper brand awareness helps in engaging in social media and keep our organisation at the forefront of the user’s minds. We should ensure each of the platforms is clearly branded. Branding contributes to reinforcing who the non-profit is and what it stands for. Education or provide the information to the users about the issues our organisation addresses. Eg, share news links or case studies. Social media is a great tool for mobilising groups of people to volunteer or attend events. The helps in the times of disasters and war. In 2009, a worldwide Twitter event named “Twestival” launched in Uganda, Ethiopia and India. The goal of this event was to provide clean drinking water, and as a result, the event raised a fund more than $250,00 US dollar.

Motion Capture is also known as Motion Tracking, or Mocap for short is 3D Animation. Motion Capture is a process in which recordings of human movement are translated into a digital code by filming sensors or every pivot point on characters body. One the video is captured it is then translated onto a 3D Model. (Oxford Dictionary, 2017)

Motion Capture technology has developed significantly since 1970. Performance capture is the term referred to when Motion tracking animates small features like figures, expressions and facial gestures. To portray, all this features more sensors hast to be used, and this makes motion capture process time-consuming. For example, the movie “Avatar” took 15 years to create. The whole purpose of this film was to record the performance of the characters and translate it into digital form.

Here I am embedding a behind the scene video of the famous movie “Avatar”, which I found while researching Motion Capture.

Mechanical Motion Capture:

This Motion Capture is a process by which the actors wear structured skeleton suit called as an exoskeleton capture system to track human joints and angles. This capturing system is the popular type of Performance capture and this because of the lowest price and availability in the field.

Electromagnetic Motion Capture:

This is the most specific type of the movement capture system relying on transmitters and receivers to track the body movement. An actor would wear a suit with several magnetic receivers in which transmitters would monitor and calculate body movements. The 20th-century Fox movie ‘The Lord of Rings’ used this technology for one of the lead roles of the creature “Gollum”.

Optical Motion Capture:

Optical Motion Capture system requires actors to wear reflective sensors over a tight Motion capture suit or their own clothes if they wish. The actor is asked to act while several cameras track the reflective pads. When cameras have the desired number of footage, it is then shared each other and translated to digital form.

History:

The system for capturing motion was first developed in the late 70’s, however, it was not recognised as a revolutionary animation technique till mid 80’s when it was eventually used for entertainment purpose. Inspired by Rotoscoping or Rotoscopy an ancient time-consuming technique was developed from early 90’s in which the animator will trace the movement frame by frame. Motion capturing technique was originally tested by the air force to track head movements of the fighter pilots by electromagnetic motion capture.

Below is the typical Rotoscope invented by Max and Dave Fleischer animators from 90’s who used rotoscoping infamous cartoons such as Betty Boop and Gullivers Travels.

Where is Performance capture or Motion Capture used?

Nowadays motion capture serves a broad range of purposes like pilot’s head movement tracking in the military, tracking of athletes in sports, determining injuries and how to treat them in medical applications, building human-like characters in animation, cartoon, games and films for entertainment and advertisement purpose.

For example, motion capture is used by worldwide car manufacturer Ford to help in developing a better product. Ford is the only company uses the same Motion capture software in its virtual engineering laps as Hollywood to create such motion pictures as Lord of Rings, Avatar and Polar Express.

Research engineer Kevin Pline, outfitted with sensors that track the movement of his body, is seated in the vehicle compartment in the HOPS lab. The compartment can be reconfigured to represent a wide variety of vehicles and study comfort levels of design. (12/22/09)

Technical Expert Ksenia Kozak studies the trajectories of research engineer Kevin Pline as he enters the vehicle compartment in the lab. Pline, outfitted with markers that track his body movement, is then questioned on the comfort of the compartment by Research Engineer Gianna Gomez-levi. (12/22/09)

In the HOPS lab, a human test subject is outfitted with up to 50 motion capture sensors. He will then perform a series of movements while his trajectories are digitally recorded and loaded into a database. The database will be used to create digital human models. (12/22/09)

“Like in Hollywood movies, Ford hooks people with sensors to monitor how they move or react when they are interacting with the machines,” said Gary Strumolo, manager, Ford research and engineering. “Once we capture the motion, we create virtual human models that can use to run hundreds of tests that helps in understanding how people of all sizes and shapes interact with all vehicle designs. This is an efficient way of tomorrow’s engineering vehicles.” (Company, F 2017).

During the pre-production stage, the first thing we decided was analysing the script and assigning the role among the team members. Each of the group members shared their personal ideas. We read the script, visualised the scene and decided about the best location which will be apt for the script. We planned to shoot the task interior and decided on the staircase of building 9. We inspected the place and took location stills before the shoot.

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After inspecting the location, I took the task of drawing the floor map. With the help of the map, we decided on the camera position and actions of the character. With the support of the map, we decided on the camera angles and shot scale of each shot. We divided the whole scene into 16 shots, and for each 16 shots we came up with different shots and angle. The staircase had enough light for the scene, so we stick on to one plan only.

Floor Map:

We deconstructed the whole scene and noted the camera position, shot type and angle.

We scaled the length of each shot and had a perfect plan for each shot. After planning the shots we decided to make a trail shoot with our phone. We almost shot our scene fully with the phone. With reference of the trail shoot, we decided on the final camera positions, angle, the length of each shot and position of the characters.

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Trail shoot clips:

We also decided on the cast and crew roles for the next day, and also when to swap the roles between the shoot.

PRODUCTION:

My first task was to set up the camera settings, the frame rate was set in 24 fps and 1/100 shutter. The location had the limited light so the higher exposure value and low shutter became the reason for high noise in the footage. The white balance or Kelvin value was 3900. Still, I decided to go on with the available light.

We has made full preparation for the shooting, but production process started with a problem; students and teachers were coming and going through the location and this made out work slow. My role was to handle the camera and also director gave me the full privilege to direct the shot. I need to tell the actors where to stand and where to move when doing the take. With the help of trail shoot, everything was easy to accomplish without further thinking. As the location was on the staircase, OTS was a bit tough to be framed. However, I managed to set a frame. With the limited time, another issue was with setting the white balance. Setting white balance for each shot made out work slow. To be frank, at times I disobeyed the director and took multiple shots from different angles because I knew how the post-production would be. Later after going through the footages, everyone in the was pleased with the more footages, and they can play with many shots.

For the sound recording, we planned to position the mic as close as possible to the characters. We recorded ambience sounds, footsteps, door opening and closing and also the dialogues. There was no recording process, so we decided not to take extreme wide shots as the boom cannot be hidden from the frame, and ended up in shooting close frames.

POST-PRODUCTION:

Naming the raw footages and sound clip was the first step and it was followed by setting up the project, sequence and bin in Premier Pro. Most of the shots were great, and continuity of the shots was also perfect. The dialogues matched the lip sync of the actors perfectly. With the flapping sound of slate, the merging of audio and video was easy. Editing was the easiest task for me, I have experience working for feature films and ad films. I’m a certified Foundry Nuke Studio artist, but working in premier pro was a learning process for me.

Half way of the movie, the character was changed, and to remove that feel in the video a “Dip to black” transition effect was used. In between the two parts, a caption is shown, “After few minute”. Then it goes to the new character, I believe this worked to a great extent. The aspect ratio of the video was set in 1:85:1, which is the standard US value for the theatrical film.

Timeline Screenshot:

Audio of the raw files was filled with noise and dialogues of the crew members. After arranging the clips and audio each clip was exported to Adobe Audion to denoise and match the adjacent clips. After importing back the “Constant power” audio transition was used to match the audio with other audio clips.

Workspace Screenshot:

Colour Grading and Correction:

I’m a great fan of David Fincher and his movie tones. So, I decided to give a bluish tone to the whole film. The Three Way colour corrector and RBG curves were used for accomplishing the task. Reducing the saturations helped me to reduce the yellow and greeish tone in the raw footage. The movie was shot in the low light interior, so the ISO was set to a high value during the shot and this caused lots of noise in the footage. Grading was tough even though the denoiser effect was used. Still, I managed to bring my favourite blue tone to my edit by playing with all three tones and three-way colour corrector.

The three-shot edit was the first task given to us in the Sound and Image tutorial. It was hard to express a story through expertise shoot, so we ended up in shooting an activity. The Expertise edit was a good start for the students who was new to the camera and framing. To be frank, I felt this assignment very elementary because I did filmmaking for my bachelor degree. However, I found this was a good start for a course; it is an opportunity for the beginners to learn basics of video making and get used to camera and editing software.

Our team chose to shoot in the building 9; the plan was to shoot a boy walking down the stairs. Our task was to capture an activity from three different angles. The first shot was the long shot of Jason walking down the stairs. As we had only one camera, we decided to do the same activity thrice. We shot all the three shots with full action. Second shot was a low angle long shot of Jason from the side. Moreover, for the final shot, we decided to fame the same first shot in Mid-shot.

Shot 1:

Shot 2:

Shot 3:

For the post-production stage, we had three footages to edit. Arranging the shots in the Premier Pro was the easiest task. The only problem was the continuity issue; for the second shot, he ran down the stairs bit faster compared to the other two shots. So the only solution I found was to reduce the speed of the clip, i.e., I reduced the speed rate to 75% and almost matched the other clips.

The other problem I wish to address is the sound; all the clips gave a different type of the sound. So while jumping from one shot to another, it was a problem. For solving this the “Constant power.” audio transition was used to match the clips. The lighting conditions were right, and the greenish colour of the shot makes it more attractive.

The whole process was not hard to accomplish, but this gave a good startup for each of us in the batch.

The first point I have taken from the reading is “Actor/ Director Relationships “. The director and actor relationship are like long marriage, where there are fights, however, at the end of the project, they come out of it loving each other. Still, think of the actor as being employee and director being the supervisor. Both must work together to get the movie done, and it is more about the quality than just finishing the job.

The director should be a master of communication, both in listening and speaking. In order to get the best out of actors or actresses, the greater focus must be given to the latter. Successful filmmakers would encourage actors to share their ideas, ask questions and maintain authority while gaining the trust and respect of the actors. It is truly having the ideas roll around in the brain, utilising them, directing the actors valuable to the movie and valued as a person as well. Actors will give hints as to where they are not happy, so attention must be paid at all times. Being open to the ideas and instructions of an actor is often what would make a good movie a great movie.

The second point I have taken from the reading is “Directors techniques when working with actors”. Director should gain the actors’ trust by encouraging them and devoting them time even though they are busy. Call for a complete silence on the shooting location so that the actor can do the last preparations peacefully. An idea here is to have an eye to eye reading and ask the actor to say their dialogues by looking at each other non-stop. For example, this kind of lesion in directing was given to Martin Scorsese by Robert de Niro during the shoot of great movie Taxi Driver. Both were together in the cab, and director said, “Make me lower the counter!”

Another point is interviewing the actor as the character. Ask actor about questions about his past also about his attitude towards specific people and events. According to the reading, this will make the actor get into the character’s head and understand his background better. Finally, I would like to bring out one more technique used, i.e.,. Giving actors an object to hold onto and play with. Actors feel more at ease when they are not sitting or standing, But, smoking a cigarette, holding a phone, taking a sip from a wine glass, all this gives them something to do and relate to the character better.

The first point I have taken from the reading is “Aural components in movie”. In a movie, everything aural is grouped into three categories namely music, speech and sound. The famous philosopher Susanne Langer said music is a tonal analog to form of human responses, bearing a close logical similarity to conflict and resolution, speed, arrest, excitement, calm, dreamy lapses (Langer 1953, p. 27),

After reading the article “Sound Design” by Alten S, It made me realize that I have to do deeper researchers in my future video projects and this was an eye-opener. Music also suggests a locale, people, a period in history. Similar characterizations can be made for sound and dialogue as well. For instance, a fire engine or ambulance van speeding down a street creates a little sense of emergency without the blaring. The bright, rapid peal of a church bell conveys a sense of celebration, in contrast to the somber tone of a slow, steady going. Now coming to speech, speech is the most obvious aural conveyor of information. However, awareness of the meaning of nonverbal sound in dialogue, or infection, also plays a part in determining our understanding of spoken words. For example, If one dialogue in a film says, “Do you see what I mean.” we understand what the sentence implies. However, by adding inflection on the specific words, the meaning of the sentence changes from concern to the inquiry, pleading or anger. Even though, there are obvious differences in how dialogue, sound, and music are conveyed; they share basic fundamental elements to aural structure and the derivation of meaning.

The second point I have taken from the reading is “Elements of sound”. While creating a sound design, we have three elements with which to work, namely speech, sound effects, and music. In my opinion, the sound is a formidable agent in communication cognitive and affective information. The sound in movies has an undeniable power to direct viewers attention to and shape their interpretation of an image, to create expectations and to bring an idea or emotion.

In movies, speech has two functions, narration and dialogue and it conveys meaning through emphasis, inflection and aural mood. The narration is usually descriptive and voice-over, i.e., the narrator describes events from outside the action, not as a participant but as an observer. Sound effects are anything sonic which is not speech or music in movies. Music provides melody and rhythm; simultaneously sound provides harmony and texture.

The abstract shoot was interesting and challenging for me. From the experience of this abstract shot, I realised that spontaneous and unplanned shots work out better than planned shots, i.e., there is no need to think about the idea beforehand. The shoot occurred during sunset which helped our team to get enough footages of refracted and reflected light with lots of contrast and shadows. We got shots of light filtering through the leaves and grass. The main two shots I took was that of the golden grasses and the silhouette of the tree filtering the sunlight. The silhouette of the tree was very sharp and gave me high-intensity shadows in the frame. The golden grasses were shot at high depth with background fully out of focused. The motion of the grass along with the wind amplified the beauty of the shot. This shot was shot in fifty frames per second, and I was able to add the slow motion for the same in the post production.

The second task was to record the SFX sounds from around the university campus. I ended up recording city ambience, rustling leaves and grasses, cawing crow, wind blowing, traffic bell, footsteps, sounds of a barking dog and water splash. From this sounds, the rustling leaves, wind blowing and traffic bell were used for my haiku edit.

The third part was a bit more challenging as the haiku was recorded on our own. Trying to record haiku with different voice was interesting. However, I could not get the desired output because of the stammering issue. So, I ended up in borrowing the audio clip from my friend. The voice was recorded in the quiet edit suit. As a result, the quality of the audio was good.

After all this production works, the most challenging part was the post production. After sorting the videos, SFX and haiku I thought of conveying meaning through the final video. The idea was to show the contrast between the busy city life and peaceful country life. During the edit, the clips are blended with one superimposed over the other. The ambience sound of the cawing crow, traffic bell and rustling leaves and grasses gave some realistic look to the video. The video started with a slow motion of the grasses and to provide more beauty to it, Chinese flute music was added to the background, and which gave a slow melodious start to the video. The music starts before, the video and later the video comes with a slow fade-in. For the first clip, the cawing of the crow and wind blowing sound with flute music was added to make the audience feels like a distant place away from cities. The video ends with the sound of the traffic bell and bike passing which was added to show how busy the life in the cities compared to the peaceful life in the countryside. The starting and ending of the video are given with a fade to black effect to give a dramatic effect. The haiku that I borrowed from my friend was synced perfectly with the meaning I intended to convey.

The high pitched female narration in the background was the most catchy in the video. Because, from my experience in working in films, most of the time, we would win with the female narration. Female narration attracts female viewers and male one who find female voice attractive. The same cannot always be said for male voices. This is the reason most of the time we would hear more female narration or voice-overs than male ones. It is a most preferred voice among both sexes, and this is what I believe.